by Keniwuru Merutepiaou

Growing up in Merita, parents are encouraged to take their children to colonial school at a very young age. One of the distinct things that happens there is, children start being discouraged from agriculture. Subtly, we are taught that farming belongs to the very poor and we should grow up to embrace skills that take us away from rural life and into urban life. We are told that a successful life can only be attained through careers in things like law, medicine or engineering. You find that a child that came from a crop farming family or animal herding family will slowly be discouraged from growing up to follow in his or her family activities. Eventually, this became the leading cause for rural urban migration. People started to abandon their homes after school to go and find work in the major towns and cities.